Interaction designers convene in Florence

Few people need an excuse to spend time in Florence, so it
speaks volumes for the organisers of Frontiers of
Interaction, a two-day gathering focused on design and digital
interaction, that they attracted a strong enough line-up to draw
participants away from the glory of the Basilica di Santa Maria del
Fiore and the Uffizi. Other than a thought-controlled drone
emerging through dry ice and -- this is Italy, after all -- an
excellent lunch, the highlights enjoyed by a lively, engaged crowd
included:

Zdenek Kalal A former PhD student at the University of Surrey, Kalal's
thesis culminated in Predator
-- a self-improving real-time vision algorithm. Predator is
able to estimate an object's location in a video sequence,
registers changes in its scale -- and learns what the object looks
like. It can then differentiate between the object and the content
in the rest of the image. Using this information, Predator scans
every frame, searching for the object; if it disappears, Predator
will be able to recognise it when it returns. Kalal demonstrated by
showing a video sequence of Predator 'learning' what a particular
car looks like, and then following it as it moves through heavy
motorway traffic.

The algorithm's ability to track, learn and detect means that it
has plenty going for it beyond a cool name. Industrial
applications, such as human/computer interfaces are a possibility:
disabled people could use Predator to control electronic devices
using facial expressions or gestures. Another conceivable
application is facial
recognition -- security cameras could 'learn' to recognise
individuals even when they leave a frame and return. Gaming companies
will likely be interested too: one of Kalal's examiners was Andrew
Fitzgibbon from Microsoft Research Cambridge, the principal
researcher on Kinect.

Laudably, Kalal has decided to open source the project:
currently there are 1,000 people involved. Wired met with Kalal
after his presentation, where he revealed that he was leaving the
following day for Silicon
Valley to meet with potential investors. One to watch.

Lynn Teo Is Groupon really an
exemplar of social shopping? This was the contention of Lynn Teo,
the Creative Director and Head of User Experience at AKQA.
Her belief is that Groupon, while collaborative, isn't truly social
as the site doesn't require interaction between consumers.

True social commerce is about bringing shopping to where people
connect and connecting people who shop, Teo argued, and shared some
insights from recent research she has conducted into what social
shopping best practice looks like.

Consumers are looking for fun when they're shopping for clothes,
and ecommerce sites should strive to prolong that experience by
giving consumers a reason to hang around. Teo cited Polyvore, a fashion etailer, as
an example of a company that offers customers ways of interacting
through pulling looks together and creating moodboards that can be
shared socially.

Users also looking for a sense of belonging -- people buying
fashion online want to find others who share their taste. Polyvore
locates others who have similar style, creating a secondary
storefront where users effectively hang out and interact. And, just
as in the real world where people visit stores to relax, many
people shop online for stress-relief; acknowledging this, French
Connection launched a YouTube
channel that integrates a shopping experience with video.
YouTube's annotation feature allows viewers of the video, which
features a stylist offering fashion tips, to click through to a
product page to make a purchase.

The core element to driving sales is content generation:
etailers must build compelling, immersive ways, to engage customers
and allow them to personalise, post and create. And users should be
offered incentives if they make relevant contributions; for
instance, if they post a link and a friend clicks through and makes
a purchase then there. As with so much of the web, successful
social commerce will rely on quality, trustworthy information and
ways of engaging users beyond browsing.